


Family Legacy

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-19
Updated: 2010-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Wayne discovers a family secret that changes his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An AU based off of _Superman/Batman 50_, in which Jor-El and Thomas Wayne meet before Krypton is destroyed.

Bruce hears the car start up.  The trunk is dark and close and the suitcase just takes up more space.  He tries to breathe slowly, tries not to think about running out of air.  No one has found him so far;  he's done it, he thinks, feeling a surge of excitement. 

The car bumps along for a long time and soon the rhythm of the tires on the road becomes soothing.  Bruce finds himself dozing, slipping in between dreams and waking as the adrenaline wears off and tedium sets in.  He went without drinking anything for as long as possible before this morning, but eventually biological urges reassert themselves;  he winces and grits his teeth, refusing to give himself away.  He has to hold out as long as possible.

Many hours later, the car comes to a stop.  He hears footsteps on gravel, a key in the lock, and braces himself.  The trunk is opened and the harsh light of a streetlamp glares into his eyes, blinding him for a moment.  He squints up at the dark figure looming over the trunk.

"What the hell?" says Thomas Wayne.

"Hello, Father," says Bruce, trying to smile.

**: : :**

"Yes, Martha, he's fine," Bruce's father sighed into the phone receiver.  "A little tired, but fine."  Bruce was sitting next to him on a hard motel bed;  the sounds coming out of the receiver made him feel like maybe this adventure hadn't been such a great idea after all.

"I don't see as we have any choice," Thomas said in response to some of those sounds.  "The little nipper's a stubborn one."  He rumpled Bruce's hair roughly and Bruce felt an incongruous glow of pride.  "Takes after his mother.  No, I don't think he's going to give up on this." 

After he hung up the phone, Thomas turned to Bruce, his face very serious.  "Bruce, why did you do that?"

"Well."  Bruce bit his lip.  "Every year around this time you go on a trip.  And...I noticed you had maps to Kansas.  And I wondered if this was why we always get that newspaper from that town in Kansas.  And I was...curious."  He wasn't sure how to explain it was more that that, how he had noticed a suppressed excitement in his mother and father's voices sometimes when they read the Smallville _Register_, the look in their eyes when the state of Kansas came up at random in conversations.  Like there was a secret there, something big.  Something exciting.  "I promise I won't tell, Father!  I promise!"

Thomas was looking at him with his brow furrowed, a speculative look that made Bruce feel both warmed and worried.  He tried not to squirm on the hard mattress, tried to sit up straight and show how mature and responsible he was.  "You're not going to let this mystery go, are you, son?"

"Um. No, sir," Bruce said, and his father threw back his head and laughed.

"I suppose you have a right to know.  And if, God forbid, anything happens to your mother and I, it will be your responsibility.  Do you understand that?" he said mock-seriously, but Bruce nodded fervently.

Thomas opened his suitcase and took out a small golden ovoid.  When he tapped the top, it levitated slightly--Bruce's mouth fell open--and a brilliant blue beam shot out from it, fanning out to become images, flickering pictures of people in flying cars, buildings like the ones in his favorite _Flash Gordon_ comics, beautiful people in strange alien clothes...

"Golly," Bruce breathed, "What is it?"

So Thomas Wayne walked his son through the use of the machine and explained how eight years ago, he and his wife had been driving through Smallville and found a UFO, how Thomas had been transported to a strange doomed place called Krypton and spoke to a man named Jor-El, a man who needed to know if Earth would be a good place to send his son Kal-El.  Bruce stared as the people in the images spoke in a strange language--all of them long dead, he thought suddenly.  Only that little baby left.  "You go back every year to check on the baby," he realised.

Thomas nodded.  "He's not a baby anymore, he's your age."

"Do you talk to him?"  Talking to a space alien!  Bruce's mind reeled, but his hopes were dashed when Thomas shook his head.

"Your mother and I were going to go back and try and adopt him, raise him as your brother, but then you showed up and your mother was so sick for a while.  By the time we got back, he'd already been taken in by a very nice couple and we didn't want to interfere.  I go every year just to see how he's doing, then go back.  I don't want to upset his family."

Crushing disappointment.  He'd almost had an alien for a brother!  And now he wasn't even allowed to talk to him!  The unfairness of life overwhelmed Bruce for a moment.  His father must have caught his crestfallen mood, because his pulled Bruce into a one-armed hug.  "Tell you what, when you get a little older I'll let you use the machine to learn more about Krypton."

"Really?"  Getting to play with alien toys was a close second to having an alien brother, and Bruce was somewhat consoled.  He watched raptly as his father played a few more visuals of Krypton, and went to bed without complaint, exhausted from the day's excitement.

He heard the liquid, starry sounds of Kryptonian in his dreams.

**: : :**

Smallville was like a town in a television show, Bruce thought as they drove down Main Street.  Big leafy trees edged the road, and the brick buildings lined up neatly along it.  "He goes to school here," his father said as they pulled up in front of a small white building.  They got out of the car and strolled along the sidewalk as if they were sightseeing.

A bell rang and kids streamed out of the school to the playground, falling into the familiar patterns of hopscotch, jump rope, and kickball Bruce was used to in his own school.  He stared at the mass of kids in bright clothing, trying to figure out which one was the last survivor of that beautiful and dreamlike world he had seen.  "There he is," murmured his father.  "In the blue and green sweater."

The boy's dark hair had a cowlick at the back, and he was wearing ridiculously thick glasses and carrying a book, holding himself with a slouching, reserved shyness.  He circled the groups of kids playing marbles, four-square, and tag, always on the edges, watching.  Other kids smiled at him and talked with him, but he always moved on, not really joining in.  Bruce felt disappointment squeeze his heart like anger as the kid eventually ambled away to sit on a rock and open his book.  He wasn't sure what he had expected--maybe someone surrounded by friends, able to kick a kickball across the whole field, the center of attention, glowing like a god--but he hadn't expected that.

"He's boring," he muttered sullenly.  "There isn't anything special about him at all."

His father crouched down to look Bruce in the eye.  "He's a stranger from another world.  He'll never be the same as the rest of those kids.  He has to try every single day to fit in, to not frighten the other kids.  That's pretty special."

Bruce hooked his fingers into the chain link fence and scuffed his foot against the concrete at the base.  "That's nothing special.  I wanted him to be different.  Different from me."

A long silence.  Bruce re-heard his words echo a few times.  Then his father's hand ruffled his hair, surprisingly gently, as Bruce glared at the links in the fence and felt his eyes burning.  "I think, son, that in the long run you'll discover that finding people like you is more of a treasure than people who are different from you."

A bell rang inside the building and the kids started to pelt into the school.  The alien boy was still sitting on the rock, his book open on his lap.  He was staring up at the sky.  "Clark!" hollered a teacher, and the boy started and jumped up to hurry inside.

"He's our secret," Thomas Wayne said as they watched him disappear indoors.  "And to some extent our responsibility.  You understand?"

"Yes, Father," said Bruce.

**: : :**

The night that everything falls apart, Bruce finds himself remembering the boy.  _Now we're both orphans.  We're both the last.  _The rain starts to rattle the windows of the Manor.  He finds himself wondering what book the boy had been reading, what his voice sounded like.

_Clark,_ he thinks.  _Clark Kent.  _

My alien brother.

**: : :**

He doesn't go back to Smallville.  At first it's impossible, and as he gets older, silence and purpose crystallizing around him, he doesn't quite trust himself not to say something.  He reads the _Register_, he tracks every bit of information about the town, about the Kents.  He knows when Clark wins a spelling bee.  He knows when there start to be reports of strange phenomena, odd happenings.  He knows what's going on, and he feels the secret and the responsibility like a warmth and a weight in his mind, in his heart.

When he's learning computer code, the first files he hacks into are Clark's school records.  No surprises there, but he feels a rush of accomplishment when he sees the information scrolling across the screen.

There are long years when he isn't in the country at all, times when every day is a series of bone-jarring training sessions and exhausted sleep, times when hunger dogs him until he can hardly think at all.  He has a purpose, he knows he does, but he's not sure what it is yet.  It's real, a weight that pulls him around the world, searching. 

When he can dream through his exhaustion, he dreams of the spires of Krypton.  He dreams in the language he's been studying every moment he has the chance. 

He learns--judo, archery, lockpicking, dancing, mountain climbing, yoga--and learns some more.  He's gathering skills and information, but somehow it doesn't come together.  He's looking for something.  He doesn't know quite what he's looking for.  He searches the world.  He dreams in Kryptonian.

He comes home and begins to put certain systems in place.  He isn't ready yet.  He isn't exactly sure what he's waiting for, what he's preparing for.  But he knows he'll be ready for whatever it is.

**: : :**

When Clark Kent goes to Metropolis, Bruce uses his pull at the _Star,_ the second-best paper in the whole city, to get the kid offered a job.

When Clark gets a position at the _best_ paper in the city, Bruce makes two resolutions:  to acquire stock in the _Daily Planet,_ and to never underestimate Clark Kent again.

**: : :**

He's watching the news when it happens:  a falling plane, a streak of blue and red.  He's standing up.  He doesn't remember standing up.  He feels a wave of exultation, of recognition.  _Clark_, he thinks.

The boy catches the plane out of the sky, and of course he's not a boy anymore, Bruce isn't sure why he's been thinking of him as "the kid."  He's on the television and without the glasses and slouch he should look totally different, but he doesn't.  He smiles and it's a shy smile, diffident.  The smile of a person who wants to do the right thing. 

Who doesn't want to do it alone.

This is what Bruce has been looking for, of course, he realizes at that moment.  There in Smallville all along, and now in Metropolis. 

Bruce finds himself pacing the floor.  He has the skills.  He has the will.  What he needs is...something.  Something like the Kryptonian symbol for hope over Clark's heart.  He needs a sign, to make him a symbol, to make him something more than human as well, in a different way.  He needs to be more than Bruce Wayne, just like the shining figure in the sky has become more than Clark Kent.  He needs a sign, an emblem, a thing he can become.  Not of hope.  Something else.

There's a crash against the window, glass falling.  Bruce looks up, startled.

The fluttering shadow falls across him.

**: : :**

His first patrol in costume was three nights ago.  His decel line is reinforced with crystalline alloys, none of which the planet has ever seen before.  He knows fighting styles that give the thugs on the street nightmares, inhuman moves that leave them gasping, wordless. 

Batman is on a roof under a red harvest moon when he comes, cleaving the sky to touch down lightly in front of him.  His face is curious, not hostile.  Almost hopeful.

Bruce bows slightly.  &lt; Kal-El, &gt; he says in flawless Kryptonian.  &lt; I am pleased to meet you at last.  My name is Bruce. &gt;

His alien brother smiles in wonder.


	2. Found in Translation

The room spun around Clark and he landed with a _wumph_ that knocked the air from his lungs a little. He wasn't actually hurt, of course, but he lay on his back for a bit, admiring the ceiling. It was walnut and intricately carved, darkened with time, glossy with age.

All the ceilings in Wayne Manor looked like that.

A form peered into his range of vision: a figure in a white _gi_, brushing slightly shaggy dark hair out of his eyes. "You don't have to _let_ me throw you," Bruce Wayne said irritably. He held out a hand to Clark.

Ignoring the outstretched hand, Clark propped himself up on an elbow. "I didn't _let_ you do anything. You're the one who's been studying _klurkor_ half your life, not me. It's no surprise you're better than I am."

Bruce rubbed the back of his head. "I keep forgetting that."

"Yeah, well, I'm a beginner at all this." Clark had barely started to grasp the language spoken in the Kryptonian datapad; to find a human capable of speaking it fluently had been...a shock. A glorious shock, a joyous shock, but one that Clark had to admit was mixed with some resentment. Why should this dark-haired stranger have grown up with access to information Clark had never had?

Except of course Bruce Wayne was no stranger to him now. He was the only person besides Clark's parents who knew his secret identity, the only person skilled enough to fight alongside him as an equal. In the last few months since their first meeting, they had stopped Eclipso, defeated Doctor Destiny, imprisoned the Parasite. Either of them alone would have been a powerful protector for their city; together they were practically unbeatable.

And when they weren't fighting alongside each other, they were studying and training together. Martial arts, language, strategy, technology--together they created an elaborate series of hand signals for secret communication, hacked into Lex Luthor's computers, incorporated both karate and flying maneuvers into their teamwork.

By now, there was no one in the world who understood Clark Kent better than Bruce Wayne did.

So why didn't Clark feel like he understood Bruce?

Part of it was the language. Bruce had a tendency to slip into Kryptonian at times, as if he assumed Clark could do so as easily and naturally. So there were times that Clark _literally_ didn't understand him. And asking someone to repeat themselves in your own planet's language was embarrassing at best. But it was more than that.

"Let's work on the car," Clark said abruptly, realizing he was just standing and staring at Bruce. Together they went down into the cave, Bruce discarding his _gi _with a total lack of self-consciousness and changing into overalls. Clark changed too, although at super-speed, his mind still on the conundrum of the other man.

He understood Bruce perfectly well in so many ways. Bruce had told him all about his parents, about his wanderings across the world, his searching for something more than vengeance to guide his life. And yet there was a sense of reserve about him at all times, a feeling that he was holding part of himself back. Clark wasn't sure what that part was, but he could feel it between them, like a wall of perfectly clear ice he couldn't get through. He shared everything with Bruce, he thought almost angrily as he crawled under the car, staring up at its humming crystalline engine. Why wouldn't Bruce do the same with him?

He hardly saw the work he was doing as he and Bruce started to calibrate the engine. Bruce added a few new crystals to the matrix, and the light shifted from blue to violet. They were lying side by side on the floor, almost touching as they looked upward at the maze of crystal and wires. "I think if we turn this one ninety degrees we should get something of a speed boost," Bruce said.

Clark just grunted, staring up at the crystals that were his birthright. He didn't understand them as well as Bruce did. Bruce should have been the Kryptonian, he thought suddenly, bitterly. He was the one who was hard to read and opaque and strange, not Clark. Bruce asked for a wrench and Clark handed it to him, feeling their fingers brush together. The touch started a clamor of emotions in him that he couldn't seem to decipher: anger and resentment and jealousy tangled up with other things that he couldn't see as clearly, things that made his heart pound and his throat dry.

Bruce shifted even closer to Clark, until his hair brushed Clark's cheek. Clark realized a couple of things abruptly: one was that his eyes were stinging, and the other was that Bruce had stopped working on the car and was just lying there, staring up into the engine. He heard Bruce swallow hard once, then twice. "I always wanted a brother," Bruce said, his voice barely audible over the quiet hum of the crystal engines. "And I thought I had one at last when I found you. _Zhelyl varyntheniano shar, urgothun, zhelyl i-athioldiv,"_ he finished. His voice was shaking slightly, but Clark hardly noticed it over the sudden rush of emotion too thick to untangle, too strong to keep at bay anymore.

He stood up abruptly, not bothering to move from under the car, simply lifting it over his head. "I don't understand you!" he heard himself shouting down at Bruce, who was still lying on the floor, his dark eyes wide as if he thought Clark intended to pummel him with the car. "You use my own language and you _know_ I don't understand it like you do, you're just--you're just mocking me!" Somehow he felt absurdly young and vulnerable despite the fact he had a car hoisted over his head. "All I am to you is some kind of extra artifact you can use in your mission. You don't give a damn about me as a person--" He heard the hurt choke his voice, too late to recall it, saw Bruce's eyes narrow, and knew he couldn't stay a moment longer. He put the car down carefully and was airborne instants later, on his way to Kansas, far from the baffling eyes that made his chest hurt, the voice that spoke like music he couldn't understand, couldn't understand.

His parents weren't at home and he found himself sitting in the barn, the sweet smell of hay and the occasional stamping of the horses a balm to his ragged emotions. The bars of sunlight across the floor were turning long and golden by the time the other sound finally registered--a thin, light singing noise, as if someone were running their finger along the rim of a goblet of finest crystal. Light was beginning to fill the air--not the golden light of sunset, but a clear, glassy green radiance. Slowly he opened the capsule he had arrived in, and light washed out over his hands; the memory of green pain made him jerk back reflexively, but there was no burning, no agony, just warmth and a faint scent like flowers.

He lifted the glowing green crystal up, staring at the runes that chased each other across its surface like quicksilver. He could make out a word here and there: _home_ and _creation_ and _solitude_. Carefully, laboriously, he began to translate the glimmering words.

When he was done, he held the crystal and felt excitement and anticipation welling in him. He could see it in his mind's eye, how the spires would lift into the sky, creating a Kryptonian palace for him, a place where he could study and rest. He would build it in the Arctic, far from any human eyes, and he would...

He would...

After a long moment, he sighed and set the crystal down. Then he turned back to the capsule, accessed the Kryptonian database, and began to look up each word Bruce had said to him hours before.

: : :

The cave was nearly pitch-black when Clark returned to it. "Bruce?" he said softly. The crystal chimed as if in response to the word, sending a sharp gleam of jade light through the darkness. He raised his voice. "Bruce?" The crystal crooned echoes and glimmers of alien delight, but the cave was empty.

He found Bruce on top of the Manor, his back to a chimney, still wearing his overalls and staring out at the distant lights of Gotham. "I'm sorry," Bruce said without preamble as Clark landed beside him. His voice was brusque and businesslike.

His eyes were not.

"I don't always think about these things," he continued before Clark could say anything. "I've studied Kryptonian for so long that there are...things I can't say in English, that I can only express in Kryptonian. Important things. Things that--" He broke off as he noticed the green crystal Clark was holding out between them in his cupped hands. "What's that?"

"It's a--a refuge-constructing-crystal," Clark said. "It doesn't translate well into English," he added sheepishly, and was rewarded by a ghost of a smile on Bruce's solemn face. "If we 'plant' it somewhere cold, somewhere isolated, it will become a sort of...fortress. A giant crystal supercomputer."

Bruce's expression sharpened, craving. Then he looked up at Clark. "'We'?" The word was small and slightly doubtful.

"Bruce." Clark had to stop for a moment as the crystal throbbed in his hand as if in response to the tone of his voice. "All I could think of when I imagined building this was the look on your face, how much you'd love to explore it. All my thoughts were of sharing it with you. You might be the most annoying, baffling, impossible person on this or any other planet--" Bruce's expression wavered between denial and laughter and Clark went on hastily before he became distracted by trying to translate the play of emotions, "--but I want to share this with you. I want to share everything with you." His voice shook slightly on the last sentence, but he ignored it, moved forward to take Bruce's hand and close it over the crystal with his.

The crystal burst into silver-green light as bright as phosphorus.

: : :

"I hadn't planned on bad weather," Clark managed over the howl of wind and blur of snowflakes. "Maybe we should come back later."

"No way," Bruce retorted, his voice muffled by the protective mask, his eyes invisible behind heavy goggles. "I'm not doing this twice." He gestured toward Clark. "What's next?"

Clark looked at the glimmering silvery runes, although he knew them by heart now. "I'm supposed to hurl it far from me and let it, uh...blossom into being."

"Well," said Bruce, "What are you waiting for?"

Clark hefted the crystal and threw it into the howling storm, aiming for an icy pool he had spotted in the distance. He saw it arc high into the air, a fleck of shining mica in a torrent of snow, saw it drop lightly back to earth.

As it touched the water, the storm dropped out of existence as if snuffed by a giant hand. The wind stopped completely, the clouds dissipating and collapsing like a film on fast-forward. An eerie silence descended.

Then Clark could hear it: a great, musical creaking, like ice floes shattering. In the distance, he could see the massive gleaming spires lifting from the ice, a graceful diagonal lattice that shone in the sudden sunlight like diamonds. _"Shurra,"_ Bruce whispered next to him; Clark looked over to see he had torn off his face mask and goggles. "Magnificent." His eyes were shining and his face flushed as he turned to Clark. "Your Fortress," he breathed. "It's magnificent."

"Ours," Clark corrected him gently, and saw the brightness in his eyes kindle into something deeper and warmer. "Our Fortress."

As they made their way across the ice, the keening song of the massive crystals like flame in both their veins, Clark heard in his memory once again Bruce's voice speaking Kryptonian as his hair touched Clark's cheek, his voice like music, a tentative melody:

_"But you have become my more-than-brother, my other self; become the other half of my heart indeed."_


End file.
